How Can the Podcast Be Free?

I offer most of the content on the Zen Studies Podcast for free, because I want the Dharma (Buddhist teachings) to be available to everyone. Plus, I enjoy creating episodes – audio and text – about this ancient, incredibly rich spiritual tradition.

However, we all need to make a living, and I currently spend 15-20 hours a week on the podcast. Members support the podcast with a small monthly pledge. If you want to help me keep generating great content, consider becoming a member!

Recent Episodes

In this second episode of two on “How to Guide Your Own Meditation,” I illustrate the process by sharing four first-person narratives about meditation experiences. In each story, someone turns their attention toward their meditative experience itself, and finds a way to adjust their effort in order to improve it.

We sometimes get stuck in simplistic meditation instructions and therefore sell our meditation short. It’s valuable to learn how to guide your own meditation – being mindful of your experience, arousing determination to do your best, and then being creative and diligent in finding ways to stay alert and focused. In this episode I explain this approach to meditation, and in the next episode I’ll offer first-person stories about meditative experiences to illustrate the process.

In this episode we finish up the Genjokoan, focusing first on the rather long passage comparing our path of practice to the way a fish swims in the water, or a bird flies in the sky. Then I’ll talk about the story at the end of the essay, where a monk asks a Zen master why he uses a fan when the nature of wind permeates everywhere, which is really a question about why we practice if reality ultimately lacks nothing.